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Friday, October 14, 2011

Alpha Moonbase

Here are some images of MPC/AMT/ERTL 1/3200 scale Alpha Moonbase from the television series Space 1999.
The base of this model is scratch built and designed to be hung on a wall.

From Wikipedia"

Located in the Moon crater Plato and constructed out of quarried rock and ores, Moonbase Alpha is four kilometres in diameter and extends up to one kilometre in areas below the lunar surface. The complex extends outward from the central Main Mission tower in a series of concentrically-arranged curved structures connected by travel-tube transit tunnels. (The look is more than reminiscent of Clavius Base in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Apart from the central tower, the surface buildings are two to three storeys in height.

Originally, the base was designed to serve as both Earth's primary space research and exploration centre and a monitoring station co-ordinating the nuclear waste disposal areas on the Moon's far side. Construction began on 3 February 1983, but was briefly halted during the 1987 world war. Construction commenced afterwards under the auspices of the new World Space Commission. Though operational and occupied for years, final completion of the Alpha construction project occurred in 1997.

Moonbase Alpha is totally self-sustaining. Power is generated by four nuclear reactors and the accumulation of solar energy. Earth-normal artificial gravity is generated by eight towers surrounding the complex. Water is obtained from ice deposits under the lunar surface, recycled and purified. Nutritional requirements are met by a variety of familiar-appearing foodstuffs produced biochemically on Alpha This diet was supplemented by frozen-food products imported from Earth before all contact with home was severed in September 1999. (At the time of "Breakaway", about eighty percent of food and water products were produced chemically on Moonbase.)

The international pooling of technical skill and resources after the War of 1987 resulted in the advanced construction of Moonbase Alpha. The operations and living areas are both functional and spacious (unlike early space capsules and Earth-orbiting stations). Main Mission, the control centre of the installation, is a massive, multi-leveled room. Opening into Main Mission from behind large sliding doors is the Command Office, which includes a large conference and conversation area. Corridors run eight feet wide throughout the base and the pipes and wiring trunks that festooned the walls of previous ocean-going military vessels and spacecraft are concealed behind four-foot-by-eight-foot modular panels.

All Alpha personnel have their own suite of rooms in the Residence Section with sitting room, sleeping alcove and private bathroom. Suites with a separate, larger bedroom are available to married staff members. Personnel also have the option to live with a roommate if desired. The Recreation Section boasts a gymnasium, private work-out rooms, a solarium with adjacent sauna and swimming pool, bowling alley, performing-arts theatre and separate cinema and a reference library with both real books and electronic equivalents. Recreation lounges and restaurants are scattered throughout the complex.

Several buildings are given over to research in a number of scientific fields including astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology and astrophysics. Others are devoted to the Technical and Maintenance Sections and are responsible for the repair and upkeep of Moonbase and its many complex systems. The Eagle transporters and other ancillary craft are maintained and stored in an underground hangar complex.

In contrast, Year Two revealed that an underground complex had been constructed and expanded upon between the two series and that the majority of Alpha's command, operations and living centres had been relocated there.[17] The vulnerable Main Mission had been abandoned in favour of the safer underground Command Centre, a smaller control room with many of the same features of Main Mission. The Medical Section once occupied an entire building on the Moon's surface and included several large wards, trauma, casualty and diagnostic units, intensive care wards and operating theatres. Underground, it was reduced to a few rooms, the main Medical Centre acting as a combination patient ward, examination room and surgery all in one. Living quarters were now one small room which did not even appear to have a private bath.

Other facilities revealed in Series Two were a complement of offensive laser batteries which had been installed around the Moonbase complex (starting in "The Metamorph"). These large weapons were stored underground and raised to the surface when deployed. They had a range of at least forty-three thousand kilometres and were controlled from the Weapons Section, a small, bunker-like room. In "The Exiles", the Golos cylinders were taken for examination in an 'underground research area', a laboratory facility constructed inside a lunar mountain on the rim of the crater containing Moonbase. This secure area, designed for the performance of potentially hazardous experiments, was connected to Alpha only by travel-tube and boasted its own Eagle landing pad.